Dreamgirls

Got off the couch on New Year's day to take in Dreamgirls.  This is the story of the Supremes with all the names changed to protect the lawyers. In general it makes me wish a) they’d do a real biography of the Supremes, and

b) that I had seen Dreamgirls on Broadway.

 

Not that the movie doesn’t have some merit.  It’s big and bold with great performances from beginning to end.

 

The performances aren't the problem here.  The bad news -  Fred Astaire is dead.  Somehow I’m going to have to get my arms around that.  What Astaire understood about musical performances on film was that the performance does the work, not the camera.  Watch his old movies and catch his singing and dancing.   You’ll see it in it’s entirety, uncut and in one take, with no close-ups of his face or feet.  You get him in full view.  It gives you subtlety and nuance, two things as absent as dinosaurs in today’s world.

 

It’s why basketball movies are usually ridiculous.  No matter how bad the shot looks leaving the hand, the camera cuts to it going through the net.  Why is Hoosiers such a beloved sports movie?   One of the reasons is that the camera work is so real.  We watched that amazing scene of Gene Hackman talking to Jimmy in the field while Jimmy hits shot after shot, and the whole thing is shot from a distance.  It gives the whole movie credibility that you don't usually get in a basketball movie.

 

Here, the director Bill Condon panders to the MTV generation with such quick cuts that it becomes frustrating.  It’s like sitting with someone else controlling the remote.  Pretty soon you want to say, “Stop, I was watching that.”  Fancy camera work doesn’t equal fancy movie.

 

Nevertheless, the performers make sure you can’t look away.  Jennifer Hudson is getting all the press for her breakthrough performance, and she’s defiant, loud, brassy, and terrific.  Her roll demands it, and is the centerpiece of the movie.  I felt her singing was way over the top most of the time, but I guess I’m in the minority on that. I liked the other two Dreamgirls just as much.  Beyonce Knowles and Anika Noni Rose have to pull off much more subtle roles that are equally important.  They must make the soap opera and the music believable.  Meanwhile Eddie Murphy is terrific and Jamie Foxx is properly evil.  Nope, you can’t fault the performers.

 

The music is good, with a little too much emphasis on the ballads.  I always associate Motown with the Temptations as well as the Supremes and I kept waiting for Funk that never came.  But, that’s probably quibbling a bit.  It is what it is, and it’s a very good movie, just not great.  Maybe it could have been.  But Fred Astaire is dead.